DOS Games Discussion

Hi all (again!, only just found this place and have plenty of games I can remember but not name!). Ok...

I recall it being called Rearguard (probably isn't though)
It's black and white.
Rogue like game play and simple game graphics (not ASCII, but simple)
I *think* it may have come with the magazine PC Plus
The final level is completely void of items/enemies except for a dragon in one of the corners. No matter what we tried, we couldn't defeat him, not matter how healthy we were.

Hmm, you could try looking up a list of roguelikes at MobyGames for a start. There's also a game called Reaping the Dungeon which uses very simple graphics, could it be similar to the one you're looking for?

There are also specialized sites/wikis for roguelike games, like RogueBasin and Temple of the Roguelike.

[Edit] Just occurred to me that your game might have been Telengard?

Hey thanks for the reply Not either of the games you've mentioned specifically, but I will try the rogue like wikis you've linked to.

I think I've gone back to mobygames at least twice a year for the past decade looking for this game (and another), but alas still haven't found it!

Non-ascii simple roguelikes might included things like Castle of the Winds, Telengard, Temple of Apshai, DnD, or Caverns of Zoarre. Are any of these similar or different from your memories?

Hi, not really hitting whatever it is I am thinking about! (though I did an image search for Caverns of Zoarre and it through a picture up of Bridge Hopper, another game I had forgotten! )

Thanks for your time/efforts though

Are any of these closer or further? Like, the DnD/Telengards tend to show one room at a time, rather than Rogue/NetHack's "one level at a time". Did the simple graphics from Caverns of Zoarre look similar to what you remember, or can you describe how it actually looked?

Anything like that you can think of might help.

Also, do you remember around when you played? And on which computer, was it definitely a PC in Dos, or maybe an Apple II/Commodore, University mainframe, Mac, or Windows box?

Old roguelike games like Moria and Omega had graphics on some systems, as I recall, (though no such screenshots on those links!), and here are some screenshots that show Rogue itself was graphical on Atari & Amiga and similar ports.

And I was recently introduced to the university PLATO system games by the CRPGAddict blog, with games like Oubliette, Moria (a different one than usual), and Orthanc. Very long shots, but maybe worth a look to say similar/not at all similar.

I played it on an Amstrad PPC 512 running MSDOS 3.3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PPC_512)

From what I recall, and I might be wrong, the whole level was one screen big, I couldn't tell you exactly how many tiles in width and height it was, but it couldn't have been many.

It's not exactly the same, but this image is quite a close graphical representation from what I can remember

http://www.pvv.org/~roarl/nethack/nethack12.png

Thanks again for your efforts!

Ooh, that's a sweet tileset. Thanks, that hopefully will help a lot. Certainly can't hurt!

Via confirmation from a different thread ( http://www.dosgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19739 ) it is in fact called Rear Guard and was a free game released on the PC Plus Super Disk 49 (October 1990)

Again, with many many thanks to Vyothric, I am now able to play this game again






Pants... looks like I need to remember what I can and cannot do all over again.

That's got a sweet look & feel, very unusual for a dos game. Very nice!

Any chance you could upload this game somewhere or send it to me? I'd like to take a look at it. I'm actually going to try to add some new games to the site soon.

Assuming it's OK to post the link here, I was able to copy a few PC Plus SuperDisk's after acquiring a new 5.25" drive, including #49 which Rear Guard is on and #35, which has Cobra (from this thread).

The menu for #49 doesn't seem to work but Rear Guard itself runs OK.

http://www.diffusedion.co.uk/PCPLUS.zip

My god, this is a tough game, tougher than I remember. I've no idea how I managed to get to the Snap Dragon when I was 7-8 years old???

It seems like receiving any strike from an enemy means at least 700 damage (put it this way, you start with 50). I'd suggest that there must be some sort of calc issue (processor wise) but it seems that I still deal damage at a rate of 1-7, so it can't be that.

Was it really that difficult?

Thanks for the link! I'll check out the games